


The Cuff

by A Nonymous (HowNovel)



Category: Starman (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1993-09-26
Updated: 1993-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-04 08:48:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/391989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HowNovel/pseuds/A%20Nonymous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To what lengths will a fan go to get Starman back on the air?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cuff

THE CUFF  
By A. Nonymous

 

The bidding had been intense. After all, the item up for auction had appeared in every single episode of STARMAN! And now she, Paula Woods, was holding it in her trembling hands, flushed with victory and with the kiss on the lips she had received from the star of STARMAN after she won the bidding.

"What are you going to do with it?" her friend Scottina whispered excitedly, from the folding chair behind Paula.

"I don't know," Paula murmured dizzily. She had not thought beyond the moment—her mind had been focused only on the frenzied bidding. It hit her that she might have to subsist on oatmeal, ramen, and beans for the next couple of years. But what did that matter? She had The Cuff!

"You could decorate it with blue stars and wear it as a bracelet to the next STARMAN gathering," Scottina whispered hoarsely. She was still a bit glassy-eyed, but she had almost completely recovered from the moment when "Starman" nearly ripped his shirt off. It was a good thing she'd remembered to take her blood-pressure medication! Another thought occurred to her still-dazzled brain. “Or you could keep it under your pillow—I bet you’d have _really_ great STARMAN dreams then!” Scottina was an eager consumer of Paula’s STARMAN stories, most of which were inspired by Paula’s STARMAN dreams. "Or you could frame it and put it up on your wall! Just think," she gulped, "it's got HIS sweat on it!"

"Probably that's what I'll do, frame it," Paula whispered back absently. She was still in shock, but she was thinking clearly enough to imagine how beautiful THE CUFF would look on her wall. It would be in the center, of course, resplendently brown among the images of irises, peregrines, foxes, cougars, dolphins, Voyager and the constellation Leo, all of which hung above her display table covered with a collection of spheres made of silver, hematite, quartz, steel, lapis lazuli, turquoise, sodalite, blue agate, and stars of various materials and designs bought at after-Christmas half-price holiday decoration sales, and a mug with the STARMAN logo made by the hands of the woman who occupied Jenny's cabin. The Cuff would outshine them all!

The only drawback was that she would be the only one who could enjoy THE CUFF there. There were no other STARMAN fans in her home town—at least, none that she knew of. Whenever people came over, they stared at the STARMAN posters and art covering Paula’s walls and asked her what it was all about. Patiently (or sometimes, not so patiently), they would listen to her attempts to explain just what it is about STARMAN that is so special. "It’s been off the air _how_ long?" they would ask incredulously. "Do you _really_ think that you can get it back?"

"Of course I do," she would reply confidently. "It doesn't matter _how_ long it takes. We're not going to give up. We have the perseverance of a Fox! We'll keep trying until we find a way to do it. I would do _anything_ to get STARMAN back!"

They would just shake their heads at this incomprehensible outburst of weirdness. After all, such devotion to a TV show couldn't possibly be normal, right? She couldn't explain it to them. They just didn't understand. “And we thought she was weird _before_ ,” her relatives would mutter.

Some of her co-workers even made fun of her. "Why don't you give up? That show will never come back on!" they would snicker. In vain Paula spent all her lunch hours describing the show and its characters, reciting the show line by line, wiping away tears as she got to lines like “Merry Christmas, mother,” or “…out of an endless night.” But she just couldn’t convey the magic of STARMAN to them. They would joke about it, doing things like going to the pay phone and loudly pretend to call the admissions department of Lindero Hospital. One of her co-workers, Jorge Zorro, even found a snapshot of Brandon Stoddard and placed it into Paula’s lunch box once, then laughed as she screamed in horror at the hideous visage grinning up at her from on top of her peanut butter sandwich.

The only one who understood her at work was her favorite white mouse, Waldo. Waldo couldn't speak, of course, but there was something in her pink eyes that signaled understanding when Paula would talk to her about the special moments in STARMAN. While cleaning Waldo's cage, Paula would whisper, "What you like about that cheese goes on forever because it becomes a part of you," and Waldo's long whiskers would seem to twitch into a smile. When no one was around at night when she was working late, Paula didn't even have to whisper when she talked to Waldo. "Baby mice are the HOPE of your species," she would say, as she cleaned the laboratory. "Love is the most important part of being a mouse." She would even talk to Waldo about what STARMAN meant to her, and how determined she was to get it back. "I would do _anything_ to get STARMAN back," she told Waldo often, her voice softened by longing for the show she missed so much. "Anything."

"Let's go, auction's over." Scottina's voice jerked Paula out of her reverie and back into the present. Paula looked at Scottina and saw that her arms were overflowing with stuffed foxes, starscape oil paintings, starry t-shirts, and other things Paula hadn’t even had a chance to bid on, she was so busy daydreaming. As they moved out the door with the euphoric stream of chattering Starpeople, Paula carefully placed The Cuff in her inner coat pocket, where it lay beside her favorite crystal sphere next to her heart, and followed Scottina out to the van proudly marked, "Official STARMAN Vehicle."  
  
---  
  
Paula had many more exciting STARMAN adventures that weekend. She chatted with STARMAN writers, serenaded STARMAN guest-stars, bought STARMAN jewelry, leatherwork, and artwork to add to her collection, and swapped some of her STARMAN stories with other defenders of the folklore. She posed for photos at STARMAN shooting locations, collected STAR-friends’ autographs on her calendar, and sang filks late into the night.

But, all too soon, the time came to fly back to harsh reality. Paula had scarcely arrived home and started to unpack when it was time to rush off to her job. She worked the graveyard shift, doing cleaning and maintenance at the Wylie Institute for Bioengineering Research. Paula was proud to work at the institute because its founder, the famed Nobel-Prize winning biophysicist Dr. Benjamina Wylie, was her heroine. (Dr. Wylie surely would have appreciated STARMAN, Paula lamented, if she hadn’t retired and moved to Nepal.)

When Paula arrived at the lab, she found the normally sedate scientists whooping, celebrating, and bathing each other in champagne. “What’s going on?” she asked the institute’s director, Dr. Sylvester.

"We have finally developed the procedure which will make mammalian cloning possible," he replied, between burps of champagne.

"Wow, Dr. Sylvester," Paula said. "That's incredible. So you're going to clone a mammal?"

"Yes. It’s a long, arduous process involving many enzymes and hormones, but there is no doubt about it. Cloning is possible, and we're going to start with a mouse."

"A mouse?"

"Uh-huh. We've already taken the cells. From mouse 617W," Dr. Sylvester replied. "They're in the refrigerator, so don’t disturb them. Tomorrow, we're going to marinate the cells in our special blend of enzymes and hormones, then irradiate them with a special frequency of electromagnetic radiation in the range of 4400 to 4600 angstroms—blue light, in laymen’s terms.

Most of the explanation was lost on Paula, whose mind froze on the mention of "mouse 617W." That was Waldo! Paula's favorite mouse was nameless to them, but even they recognized her as a special mouse—and what had Dr. Sylvester said about blue light?

"Well, we're all exhausted from the celebrating, so none of us will be staying here tonight. You have the place to yourself, Paula," Dr. Sylvester said. "Have a good evening." He grabbed his coat and followed the rest of the raucous group out the door.

Paula stood alone in the silence of the lab, where the only sounds were the humming of equipment and the occasional squeak of a mouse. _All this confetti they left for me to sweep up_ , Paula thought with a sigh. She began to feel the effects of Post-Celebration Downswing as she eyed the puddles of champagne on the floor.

As she swept up the confetti and mopped the floor, Paula found herself next to the mouse cages. "Mouse-beings have a remarkable capacity to share," she said, and at the sound of her voice, Waldo uncurled her tiny white body and scampered to Paula. Her pink nose nuzzled Paula’s fingers, and a thrill ran through Paula as she thought about being witness to this historic event. She walked over to the refrigerator and opened the door. There it was, on the top shelf, a plain-looking Petri dish simply marked "Cells for cloning, 617W."

She clutched her chest in excitement. It took a moment for her to realize her hand was pressing against a soft lump. It was The Cuff, still in her inner coat pocket, next to her sphere.

She slowly took The Cuff out of her pocket. She stared at it for a moment, a piece of STARMAN magic that had followed her back to the ordinary world. Scottina’s voice suddenly echoed in her ears: "It's got HIS sweat on it!"

_And his skin cells, too_ , Paula thought…

“Lucky I was so good at cell culture in high school biology,” Paula said to Waldo, as she washed the contents of the petri dish down the drain. “I would do ANYTHING to get STARMAN back.”

“ANYTHING!!!!!!!”

 

The End?  



End file.
